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Heir of Illusion Chapters 28–36 Summary
This Madeline Taylor Heir of Illusion chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 28
Ivy storms into Della’s office with news that her father was murdered overnight. The killer left a bloody message using the word “mercy,” a deliberate signal from someone who knows Ivy is the Angel of Mercy.
Ivy wants to investigate immediately, but Della shuts the idea down. With Ivy’s recent engagement drawing extra scrutiny, they need to stay quiet and out of sight for a while.
The conversation turns ugly. Ivy accuses Della of abandoning everything they’ve built, and Della fires back that she’d rather stop permanently than get them both caught. Ivy then blurts out a truth she’s held for a long time. She couldn’t save Leona, and this work is the only way she knows how to live with that. Embarrassed by the confession, Ivy runs.
Downstairs in the casino, Darrow offers his sympathy about Ivy’s father. Shortly after, Alice hands Ivy a note from Della, who has apparently changed her mind and is sending Ivy out on a job that same night.
As Ivy heads for the door, Darrow stops her and confesses that he lied about having no way to remove her collar. The almanova could do it, but Ivy would only be swapping one captivity for another. She doesn’t stop walking, her mind already made up.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 29
Ivy walks into Alice Darby’s trap on purpose. She sends her eidolon Rose ahead as a decoy while she trails behind invisibly, hoping the ambush will lead her to a stolen sword that can free her from her collar.
The trap springs in an alley where Alice has gathered more than a dozen armed people around Rose. When Griffen drops from a rooftop to help, Ivy whispers instructions to him and has Rose taunt Taron about killing his friend Lynal. Taron charges, Ivy cuts his leg, and Griffen takes out two of the knife‑wielding men.
Grell Darby then appears. His presence makes Ivy’s collar burn and sends a voice into her mind that chips away at her will until she loses her grip on her illusions and collapses.
Thorne arrives, descending into the alley with black wings and a scythe. His shadows tear through the attackers while the rest flee. Taron finds Ivy and beats her before Thorne throws him off. By the time the chaos settles, Darby and Alice have slipped away and taken the sword with them.
Ivy and Thorne argue about his interference until Taron makes one final lunge. Thorne steps into the path of the blade and takes it to the throat. Ivy presses her bare hands against his neck to stop the bleeding. When Thorne opens his eyes and sees what she’s doing, he tells her to get away from him. Ivy realizes she’s touching the God of Death.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 30
Ivy accidentally touches Thorne’s bare skin and immediately panics, bracing for the agonizing effect his deadly touch has on others. When nothing happens, both of them are stunned. Thorne insists she must simply be in shock and that the pain hasn’t hit yet, but Ivy isn’t convinced. She follows him as he backs away in fear and persuades him to let her pull off his glove. They press hand to hand and wait. She feels nothing.
Growing bolder, Ivy brings Thorne’s hand to her cheek, and Thorne slowly begins exploring her face on his own. The moment shifts from tender to passionate, and they become sexually intimate in the alley.
The encounter ends abruptly when Griffen walks in on Ivy and Thorne. Thorne drives Griffen off, but the interruption clears Ivy’s head.
Ivy starts worrying that Thorne only pursued her because he suddenly discovered he could touch her without causing harm, and the thought of Baylor finding out frightens her. Ivy tells Thorne it was a mistake and leaves despite his attempts to coax her into staying. She cloaks herself in an illusion and slips out of the alley, while Thorne follows her through the air all the way back to the Palace.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 31
Nigel Pomeroy’s funeral takes place in the royal temple, where Baylor delivers a speech that portrays Nigel as the picture of loyalty and devotion. Ivy sits in the front row beside Bellamy, dry-eyed and unmoved by the whole affair.
The siblings manage a hushed conversation during the service. Ivy learns Baylor has ordered Bellamy to leave right after the funeral to handle their late father’s estate. She recognizes this as Baylor’s way of cutting her off from the one family member she has left.
Before Bellamy goes, Ivy pulls him close and urges him to prepare for the worst. She tells him to secure a hiding place, stock it with money and supplies, and be ready to run when the time comes. She also gives him the name Dellaphine Cardot, a club owner, as the person to contact if he needs to find Ivy later.
After the choir finishes and the crowd settles, Baylor returns to the podium with one more item on his agenda. He frames Nigel’s death as the work of a person known as the Angel of Mercy and announces a reward of fifty thousand gold coins for anyone who helps bring that person in. The room erupts in cheering.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 32
Ivy is summoned to a private dinner with Baylor and Kaldar. Kaldar spends most of the meal complaining that the bounty Baylor placed on the Angel of Mercy is an irresponsible expense given the food shortages in the north.
The dinner is interrupted when Thorne arrives with his companions Griffen and Fia. Thorne seats himself next to Ivy and makes pointed remarks about their time together throughout the meal, clearly intended to unsettle both Ivy and Baylor.
Baylor then proposes that Thorne use the almanova to kill a prisoner who cannot be executed by ordinary means. Thorne agrees but names his price. He wants Ivy’s collar removed. Baylor says he’ll think about it, and Thorne’s group leaves.
With Thorne gone, Kaldar wastes no time suggesting that Ivy has been sleeping with Thorne and may have betrayed the king. Ivy drives a dinner knife into the table beside his hand, and Baylor throws him out.
Alone with Baylor, Ivy denies any betrayal but turns the accusation back on him by bringing up his affair with Bridgid. The argument spirals, and Ivy lets slip a reference to something Baylor did to Leona, though she quickly tries to walk it back. She pleads that she buried her father that morning and asks to postpone the conversation until the next day. Baylor agrees.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 33
Ivy rushes back to her room, shaken after an argument with Baylor. She soon realizes that Thorne has followed her and pulls him in from the rain‑soaked balcony. Ivy confronts Thorne, furious that he tried to intervene in her situation as though she were something to be bargained for. Thorne insists he was trying to help her escape, not claim her.
The fight escalates, and Ivy lashes out, calling what happened between her and Thorne a mistake and implying he only pursues her because she’s the one person who can physically tolerate his touch. The words wound Thorne.
Before Ivy can take her words back, Thorne tells her plainly that he has wanted her since the first time they met and that he would willingly surrender the ability to ever touch her again if it meant she could be free.
Thorne’s honesty shakes Ivy, but she cannot let herself believe him. Ivy asks Thorne to leave, and he does, though not without telling her she hasn’t heard the last of him.
Alone, Ivy cries and cannot shake the feeling that sending Thorne away was the wrong choice.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 34
Ivy sneaks into the underground tunnels at night, using Kipps’s dried blood from an old tunic to get past the locked door. Her ruby collar burns hotter with every step up the staircase. At the top, she finds a hidden alcove with iron bars dividing the room. A nearby chair and personal supplies make it clear that Baylor visits that place regularly.
Inside, Ivy finds Maebyn, the Goddess of Illusion, who’s been missing for twenty‑five years. Frail but still striking, Maebyn wears a ruby collar identical to Ivy’s. Baylor has kept her imprisoned there the entire time.
Maebyn reveals that someone once asked about Ivy’s origins. She tells Ivy that Ivy carries her true father’s eyes, suggesting her parentage is far more significant than she realizes. Ivy assumes the person was Baylor, and Maebyn explains that Baylor told her he might have to kill Ivy.
Then Maebyn shares a crucial piece of information. The almanova can kill a god outright when wielded by one. Baylor intends to have Thorne use it against Maebyn, and once she’s gone and her divine successor appears, he plans to eliminate that person too.
Ivy tries to break through the bars but fails. Maebyn tells her the sword is the only thing that could ever open the cell, making it both the instrument of her freedom and her death. She urges Ivy to leave and not return, and she tells Ivy that her fate belongs to her alone. Ivy leaves, determined to find the sword and free them both.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 35
At a stone archway deep in the forest called the veil, where souls pass into the afterlife, Ivy comes to pay her respects. It’s the first anniversary of Leona’s death, and she lays lilacs on the steps while whispering a promise that Baylor will pay for what happened to Leona.
Before Ivy can finish, someone stabs her from behind with a poisoned blade, then slams her head into the stone steps repeatedly until she can barely move. When her vision clears, she sees Kaldar standing over her. Kaldar drags her up the stairs and taunts her, revealing that he was the one who killed Leona, and that he did it on the king’s behalf. Now he intends to push Ivy through the veil.
Summoning what little strength she has left, Ivy yanks the dagger from her own back and buries it in Kaldar’s chest. He staggers forward and crashes into her, and she loses her footing at the edge. Both of them fall through the veil together.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 36
Ivy returns to the palace after killing Kaldar in the woods and finds Thorne waiting in her room. She confesses what she did. He barely blinks at the news and tells her that nothing she could do would drive him away.
Thorne notices that Ivy was stabbed with a poisoned blade, which has kept her wound from healing. He cleans the injury, and she allows him to stay the night.
Once Ivy and Thorne settle in bed, Ivy asks why he spent his one favor with the king on buying her freedom. Thorne explains that no one ever stepped in for his mother when she needed help. He also reveals that the enchanter who tormented his mother now serves in the court of the God of Life, which explains his friction with Foley.
The conversation shifts when Ivy raises a hypothetical about killing a God. Thorne explains that if someone kills a God’s Heir during the vulnerable window right after the God dies, that person can seize the divine power for themselves. Ivy connects the dots. If Baylor is ready to move against Maebyn, he must already know where her Heir is. Ivy falls asleep in Thorne’s arms with that thought lingering.